


what comes after the chorus

by bluecloak



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Secret Samol 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 19:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13254738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecloak/pseuds/bluecloak
Summary: It's pretty exhausting being dashing revolutionary space criminals.





	what comes after the chorus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intearsaboutrobots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intearsaboutrobots/gifts).



> happy (belated) secret samol, @intearsaboutrobots!

(1)

Cass’s ears are still ringing. There is a sharp, biting pain in their shoulder that serves as an acute reminder of how important good planning is and how much it sucks to make a living where being shot is just a _thing_ that is going to happen. In retrospect, the former seems to correlate directly with the latter.

They try to focus, and even that feels like it needs more muscles than it should.

“Are you guys okay?” Their voice scrapes when they speak, scratchy with dust.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” That’s Mako now, hand steady on their uninjured shoulder. “Aria, tell Cass they’re not funny.”

“Cass,” says Aria, her voice tight and measured in that way it got when she didn’t want it to waver, “ _We’re_ fine. I don’t know about you.”

 _No_ , they think, _no, look at you two, you look like shit,_ you _have a black eye and_ you _were on fire just five minutes ago, where’s my_ kit _, where_ —

Then Aria tells them to shut up, and Cass realizes they said all of that out loud.

Currently, AuDy has commandeered an unremarkable-looking but extremely stolen van full of clunky equipment, some boxes of miscellaneous contraband, and one small, slightly panicked gaggle of wayward criminals. There aren’t any seats except for up in front where AuDy is, but that had made it easier for the other two to carry Cass in and lay them down in the back.

Aria and Mako fix them up, and their frantic hissing at each other about what to actually _do_ goes away soon enough with a few directions from Cass. The two of them manage it pretty well, even if they are overzealous with the bandages.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” asks Mako for the fifth time.

“Stop showing me fingers,” says Cass. “Listen, I’m _fine_.”

“You were shot,” says AuDy from the driver’s seat. “I do not think ‘fine’ is a word that belongs in the same category as gunshot wounds.”

“I’m a doctor. I would know if I wasn’t fine.”

Mako and Aria give each other a capital L Look at this, and Cass glares weakly at their blatant attempt at conspiracy. “Stop that, both of you. It isn’t _that_ bad. It just grazed me.”

“Yeah, but there was that explosion too,” says Mako.

“Explosions,” corrects Aria.

“Right, explosions.”

“Ugh,” says Cass.

There are more sounds of gunshots coming from behind the van, and AuDy makes a couple of completely terrifying maneuvers that send the rest of the group tumbling into each other. Mako and Aria do their best to keep Cass from getting bumped around too much.

“ _Grazed_ ,” Aria mutters. “There’s probably more of your blood on my clothes now than inside you.”

“Hey, you’re Aria Joie. You could make it work.” Cass shifts a little and tries not to wince at the painful twinge that comes from even that.

“Is that a joke?” Mako tries a grin, but his heart isn’t in it. “You must be doing a lot worse than we thought.”

Cass wants to argue, wants to at least get upright and do—something. They don’t know what, but they aren’t used to being the one who has to be patched up and looked after. Still, they’re exhausted. It’s hard to keep their eyes open, even when everything hurts.

“C’mon,” Mako says, giving them a nudge, “You’re our only doctor. What are we gonna do if _all_ of us are running around getting shot?”

 

 

By the time Cass wakes up, it’s dark, but it was already getting dark when they all made their escape. It takes a second for them to understand that they had fallen asleep in the first place. Their body, meanwhile, is all too happy to remind them of all the horrible decisions they made today so Cass indulges themself with a good, long grimace.

There’s something soft under their head, and they realize that it’s Mako’s jacket, bundled up into a vague approximation of a pillow. Today, it’s something lime-green and holographic, the print incomprehensible.

It’s quiet in the van, and warm. Mako is curled up next to them in a credible imitation of a soft pretzel and fast asleep; Aria is on their other side, leaning back but still awake. The two of them were probably trading off, Cass thinks. There’s a scrape on her cheek that they didn’t see before, a smear of antiseptic gel over it.

“Hey,” she says, smiling a little. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible.”

She lets out a huff of laughter. “Yeah? Wonder why.”

But Aria isn’t saying something, which isn’t the same as just not talking.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Cass tries, the words awkward in their mouth. “You guys did a good job.”

“That’s not…” Aria sighs. “You know, we couldn’t even _find_ you at first? It was only for a minute or two, but it was still—it was awful.”

“I’m sorry. I would’ve said something, but—”

“You were busy thinking of us,” Aria says. “I know.”

After a while, Cass says, “You should get some rest too, Aria. It’s been a long day.”

“No, I’m fine,” she says, yawning. She flaps a hand down at them and Mako. “Besides, you guys look so cozy. Well, he looks cozy. You look perforated.”

“It will be approximately twenty-seven minutes until we arrive,” says AuDy. “If you wanted to rest, Aria, I am perfectly capable of monitoring Cass’s condition until then.”

“Are you sure?”

“It is only a short amount of time.”

It’s still too crowded in the back for anyone to get really comfortable, and it’s a miracle that no one gets squashed by any of the mysterious boxes full of very illegal things. Somehow, though, it’s easy for Cass to drift back off to sleep, there between the colors of Mako’s jacket and the brush of Aria’s long hair, and AuDy driving them through the night and all the way back home.

 

 

(2)

 _It looks okay_ , Aria thinks. She shines the flashlight this way and that into the elbow joint of the Regent’s Brilliance. Nothing out of place, thankfully. She’s been worried after the last job since the Brilliance was hit so hard, but it looks like its armor took care of the worst of it.

Aria clicks the flashlight off, tucks it into her belt, and clambers deftly from the crook of the Brilliance’s arm and up its shoulder, swinging herself into the open cockpit. If the exterior is fine, then she can do a little maintenance on the interior.

It’s funny. Not too long ago, she had a whole team of people to help take care of the Brilliance. Even as a backup dancer, it was still a rigger at heart so it needed regular maintenance—a little rewiring here, a replacement there, and of course, plenty of polish for the outside. She used to tweak things now and then, but nothing like she does now. After all, the Brilliance is a fighter these days, and Aria is all it has. She’s had to learn fast to keep up with the things it needs. She can’t do _everything_ because some hits need more than just one person to fix, but it’s pretty close.

It was hard work, sure, but Aria knows every part of the Brilliance now: every battle scar, every new bolt twisted into place, every line of meticulous code.

She gives the wall of the cockpit an absent little pat as she climbs inside. There’s the toolbox that she left on the seat, and she rummages around in it before hunkering down on the floor to pick up where she left off.

Aria hums while she works, a half-finished song with a chorus she can’t figure out yet. Her voice is a little tinny inside the cockpit, but there’s no one around but herself to mind. She shines her flashlight into the wiring so she can get a real squint at it, fingers careful and precise.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the outside of the Brilliance and Aria jumps, bumping her forehead on some paneling she’s pulled open. She curses and scrambles up from the floor.

“Aria!”

A head pops into the cockpit. It’s Mako.

“Hey,” she says, rubbing at her forehead. It doesn’t feel like a bump, at least. “What’s up?”

“Hi,” says Mako, scooching up and dangling his arms over the opening. “I was gonna get something to eat, and like, maybe smoothies? Wanna come?”

Aria remembers the sad little bagel she’d had that morning, and the even sadder state of their kitchen. The offer does sound good, but…

“You can go ahead,” she sighs. “I’ve still got like, at least an hour of stuff to do.”

“Hm, okay. Want me to bring you anything? I haven’t decided where to go, so you can just tell me whatever.”

“Ummm. I’m okay with whatever you’re having, unless the thing has tomatoes and you don’t want tomatoes—then I want tomatoes also.”

“Gross, but sure. Smoothie?”

“Mango sunset, _please_.”

“Gotcha.”

“You’re the best, Mako.”

He does some finger guns at her before he leaves and Aria gets back to work, feeling a bit lighter now for thoughts of an imminent smoothie. She fires off a text to Mako too—a vague reminder to get some real groceries if he’s going that way, a little line of lots of hearts. He replies with a picture of himself standing in the bread aisle looking extremely serious, which makes her giggle.

Aria is putting the paneling back when there’s a cheerful knock on the hull of the Brilliance. She puts down her tools and sticks her head outside.

“The guy at the shop gave me extra dessert,” Mako announces smugly, holding up a white paper bag. He’s perched on the same arm Aria was working on earlier, swinging his legs like a kid up a tree. In the middle of the Brilliance’s hand, there’s another bag and a paper tray with two smoothies.

“Did you charm him?” Aria asks, climbing down to meet him. “And are there tomatoes for me?”

“I was _super_ charming.” He hands her a bag. “And yes to the tomatoes, you monster.”

“How charming?”

“Extra chocolate cake charming.”

“ _Ooh._ ”

“Right?”

They share the cake up there on the arm of the Brilliance, feet dangling. Mako tells her what groceries he got, and Aria says she didn’t mean ten packs of tangerine fruit cups—though they both agree that it counts as a vitamin thing so Cass won’t be too mad, probably.

Mako crumples all the trash into one bag, and scrunches that into a big ball. “You coming down yet?” And when Aria shakes her head, he asks, “Want some help?”

What Mako helping mostly means is him handing her tools while she works, holding something fiddly in place, and providing a stream of easy chatter. The work does go faster with two people, though probably not as fast as it could have without Mako distracting her with personality quizzes and videos of what he _insists_ are chickens. They end up just staying there long after Aria’s finished her work, filling the heart of the Brilliance with warmth and bright, noisy laughter.

Later, Cass finally finds them there, sprawled gracelessly on the floor of the cockpit and dead asleep: Aria wrapped in Mako’s jacket (obviously stolen) and Mako peacefully suffocating to death under her hair.

Cass sighs, and steels themself for the monumental task of having to wake them.

They pull out their phone and turn the volume up.

 

 

(3)

“You are still awake.”

“Hey, AuDy,” Mako says without looking up. He’s lying on his stomach in bed, chin in hand, and watching a movie. Now and then, he’ll reach blindly into a bag of fruit snacks and stick a handful in his mouth. “What’s up?”

“Mako, it is late.”

“Sure is, buddy.”

It’s really amazing how expressive AuDy can be without like, a head. Mako can feel the waves of disapproval rolling right off them.

“No one got any sleep on the last job,” they say. “We only got back to the Kingdom Come a few hours ago. Everyone else is in bed.”

“I _am_ in bed,” Mako points out.

AuDy gives them what can only be called a Look, another incredible feat for someone without any of the equipment for it.

“You have been awake for thirty hours,” they say, “Though it is closer to thirty-one now.”

“Well, yeah, but so have you.”

“I do not need to sleep. I am a robot.” AuDy says the last part of this very slowly, their voice flat.

Mako grins up at them. “I know! So I can keep you company, right?”

“I do not need company. I need the people on this ship to not die of sleep deprivation.”

“Aw, don’t get all sappy on me now.” Mako pats the bed enticingly. “C’mon, have a seat. I can’t talk to you if you’re just looming in the doorway.”

AuDy doesn’t bother pointing out that he obviously _can_ , which Mako thinks is very understanding of them. After a moment, they step into the room and settle down on the edge of Mako’s bed. That part of the mattress dips immediately under the sudden weight; AuDy is pretty heavy, after all.

“I know you have a habit of staying up late,” they say, “but you are usually the first to crash after a long mission like this one.”

“How’d you even know I was awake?” says Mako, rather than explaining himself. He rummages around for another fruit snack.

“I have lots of things to check up on the ship. I saw the light from your room on my way from the hold. Why are you still awake?”

Mako shrugs, and his eyes slide back to the screen he’s pulled up.

“Mako.”

He ignores that, and instead asks, “What do you wanna watch? This movie’s kind of a bummer so I was going to pick something else anyway.” He scrolls through the titles, fingertips to light. “What’ll it be, AuDy? Romcom? Murder mystery? Nature doc?” Mako brings up another window. “I’ve got all of _Hieron_. We could do a marathon!”

Mako is almost sure AuDy is going to just get up and leave. He’s already pulling the shitty sad movie back up when they finally respond.

“Okay,” says AuDy.

“What?” Mako blinks. “Wait, really?”

“Yes.” A pause. “We can do a marathon.”

“Holy shit.”

Mako runs a few options by AuDy and ends up putting on a baking show. He likes them okay, but right now he is motivated purely by curiosity. He suddenly needs more than anything else in his _life_ for AuDy to be introduced to competitive bread-making.

AuDy arranges themself into a better viewing position, closer to the top of the bed. Mako nestles in next to them, complains briefly about their cold…everything, and hits play.

Half an hour later, Cass sticks their head the room, squinting blearily at the two of them.

“What the _fuck_.”

“We are watching a show about baking,” AuDy explains.

Mako stops trying to muffle his laughter in his pillow and says to Cass, with complete and transcendent delight, “AuDy called one of the cakes _tasteless!”_ And that’s as far as he gets before collapsing back onto the bed.

“It is a pun, or play on words,” says AuDy solemnly. “I only realized it after the fact. It is unfortunate.”

Cass looks at the screen. “Huh. I haven’t seen this episode.” They shuffle over to the bed and brush away some empty wrappers before gingerly settling down. “Can you rewind?”

Fifteen minutes later, Aria swings open the door, wrapped in a huge, fluffy comforter. She kicks it shut, scoots onto the bed beside the others, and yawns enormously.

“What’s up?” she mumbles, already about halfway back to unconsciousness. Her head droops against Cass’s shoulder.

Mako tells her immediately about AuDy’s amazing pun. Cass rewinds the episode so she can have a visual aid.

“I’m so proud,” Aria says, and presses a vague kiss to AuDy’s chassis.

When Mako wakes up later, there’s an elbow in his stomach. He doesn’t know whose, and doesn’t care very much. Yawning, he pushes it away and flails around for wherever the fuck the blanket went. It’s so _cold_.

He peers out into the watery, blue-gray darkness, not quite morning but about to tip into it. There’s not much to see besides Cass’s leg drooping sadly off the edge of the bed, and Aria’s hair attempting to topple another remnant of the Apostolosian Empire by smothering them to death.

He doesn’t think his tiny bed can handle the fallout of that scandal.

Mako gives up and tugs a corner of Aria’s comforter over to himself instead. As he does, he glances across at AuDy, miraculously still present and—

“Oh my god,” Mako whispers.

The little screen they have on their torso is blank, but it isn’t off. There, bouncing around in the nebulous computery void are the words AUTOMATED DYNAMICS™ in a badly rendered 3D font and shifting rainbow colors.

And because all good things must come to an end, the words quickly disappear as AuDy stirs and says, “Hello, Mako.”

“I thought you didn’t need to sleep! Hey, can you change your screensaver? Can _I_ change it?”

“I don’t. Yes. No.”

“Aw.”

AuDy makes an ambiguous noise that somehow captures the entire emotion of rolling one’s eyes. “I do not need sleep, but I do have a sleep mode.”

“I’ve never seen you use it.”

“Usually it is unnecessary,” they say. “How did _you_ sleep?”

Mako opens his mouth to reply, and then pauses. “Wait, was that what this was all about?”

AuDy shrugs eloquently. “You seemed antsy after the job. You wouldn’t say why, but you were also going thirty hours without sleep. A few hours of watching people bake bread and cry about the bread would either wear you out or kill you.”

“Huh,” says Mako. He curls the comforter around himself some more. “What if it didn’t kill me?”

“Soothing rain noises,” says AuDy cryptically. Their screensaver flickers on again. “Go back to sleep.”

 

 

(4)

AuDy always has something to say. Some of it is confusing; a lot of it is rude. At least half of it is, if not outright lies, then a careful omission of truth. Even the way they _don’t_ say something can be cutting; AuDy is capable of getting the last word in an argument without ever speaking it. That particular trick is frustrating as hell, mostly because the other person usually doesn’t notice until later, when they can’t do anything about it. Orth knows that from experience.

 _This is worse_ , he thinks. _This silence. AuDy isn’t supposed to be like this._

They don’t look that different. There they are in the captain’s seat, doubtless and immovable. Same as always. If Orth had just walked into the room, he probably wouldn’t—well, he hopes he would notice. Haven’t they known each other for long enough now? Wouldn’t he?

Most of AuDy’s lights have gone out, not that there were many to begin with. Occasionally there will be a pulse or a beep, some sign of a process still humming underneath it all, but it’s nothing that Orth understands.

It isn’t like AuDy has just shut themself off. That’s happened a few times before (mid-conversation, even), and while it isn’t necessarily great, at least Orth knows that it won’t be long before they’re back.

This, though. He has no idea what to do about this. It feels like he’s always scrambling for purchase these days. Orth has had enough of waiting in his life—for the other shoe to drop, for other people, for things to change—but it looks like that’s all he can do now.

It’s been _weeks_.

The thing is, things are moving forward anyway. AuDy, for all their silence, is still steering the ship towards September. He almost laughs at that. Even while completely cut off from the world, AuDy still finds a way to make Orth’s job here feel redundant.

He tries talking to them a few times. But, well. Coaxing conversation out of AuDy when they didn’t feel like it has never been easy. But just a word here, an absent comment there. _Night, AuDy_ and _just going down to the hold, AuDy_ and _what are we going to do, AuDy?_

Orth keeps an eye on the rest of the Chime too. It’s hard going, he knows, being stuck on one ship for such a long time. Everyone keeps themselves busy. Aria in the rigger hold with her sleeves rolled up, laughing while Jacqui hands her a wrench. Cass in the kitchen, floury up to the elbows and with their hair tied back. Mako surrounded by jars and bottles and mysterious boxes of stuff, blasting his cleaning playlist as loud as he can because he thinks it will annoy Orth.

It feels like there’s not enough to do; it feels like there’s too much. Everyone looks exhausted even standing still, but at the same time, they’re restless and putting all that energy into anything they can find. The Kingdom Come is cleaner and better maintained than it has been in years. So is its pantry. God, Cass is making pasta by _hand_.

He tries to keep himself busy, but god knows how much good it’s doing. Sometimes he’ll try to fix something or rearrange something else, and then he’ll finish it. And then he’ll sit there with his hands empty and that same old gnawing anxiety in his gut until he can find something else to do.

When he walks through the halls, sometimes he’ll spot someone crashing on the beat-up old couch in the lounge, or fast asleep in an uncomfortable chair (the only kind the Kingdom Come had, incidentally), or just passed out in their bed, too worn-out to even close the door. A lot of times, they’re some combination of together. Everyone is just…tired. And he knows none of them are getting enough sleep; they’re all just catching some wherever they can, when they can. He hopes it’s enough.

Orth has a room made up somewhere. There’s nothing wrong with it. Sometimes it’s a bit too cold, but the rest of the Kingdom Come is like that too. He knows he needs more sleep.

Cass tells him that much, leaning their shoulder against the doorway to the cockpit, arms crossed over their chest.

“I’ll be fine,” Orth tells them.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Cass doesn’t look convinced, but they hardly ever do. “Don’t keep yourself up, Orth.”

They give the captain’s seat one halting glance before they leave.

Orth turns back in his own chair and pulls up a screen. It’s a list of…something. He can’t remember what, even though he just put it aside for a second.

It can keep until tomorrow. He _should_ go to bed.

“What do you think, AuDy?” he says, out of habit.

It’s no use, of course. So Orth just brings up some more files until his memory rights itself, and he keeps working.

That first night, weeks ago now, he’d just slept here. He had taken off his jacket, folded it over the back of the copilot’s chair, and simply watched AuDy’s lights dim and brighten in the dark until he finally fell asleep. Nothing had changed for AuDy when he woke up, but everything else on the ship was still ticking along.

Time would keep moving forward. He had to keep going too.

Orth yawns, and rubs at his eyes under his glasses. He shuts off the screens he pulled up earlier and shuffles away files into their proper places.

Then he takes his jacket off the chair, switches off all the lights, and heads back to his room.

 

 

(5)

“So,” Mako says, “How’ve you been, Aria?”

“ _Mako_.” Aria sighs incredulously and lowers the gun. “What are you _doing_ here?”

He puts his hands down and sticks them in his pockets, unperturbed.

“Oh, you know,” he says nebulously, rocking back on his heels. “I was just…in the neighborhood. I thought I’d drop in and say hi.” He smiles, meteor-quick. “ _So_. Hi.”

“You were just—it’s three in the morning.” Aria drags a hand through her hair. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong _._ ” His voice is light, but his gaze skitters fitfully from her face to the ground and back again. “Can I come in?”

They don’t really see each other that often, but Mako doesn’t look so different to Aria. Older, obviously, but so is she. He still has the same bright slant of a grin, the same easy cadence when he speaks. Close, anyway. Aria knows about performance, and she can tell Mako is trying too hard.

“This isn’t like, covert spy stuff,” is the first thing he says after she sits him down in the kitchen.

“I didn’t think it was.” Aria pulls open the cupboard, puts the gun next to the granola, and takes out some hot cocoa mix. It’s been a while since they last met, but chocolate is a pretty reliable constant.

For a few minutes, the only sounds in the kitchen are Aria making the cocoa and Mako fidgeting restlessly at the table.

“Sorry about the mess,” she says belatedly, laying down two steaming mugs. It's a thing that requires some measure of precision; most of the table is covered by a sprawling sea of paper that has already consumed her tablet, a few pens, and a previous mug of tea.

Mako smiles into the rim of the mug, tired and slight, but it’s more genuine than before. “Working late? Can’t you delegate some of this to other people?”

“You are the _last_ person who should be telling me that. I’ve heard about the things you get up to.” Aria settles into her chair and looks across at him, considering. “So, what’s going on?”

“Honestly? Nothing. Not like you’re thinking, anyway. I was just—” Mako scrutinizes the mass of papers before reaching in and plucking one of Aria’s lost pens out. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s. You know.”

Aria absentmindedly smooths down the corner of a piece of paper.

“Yeah,” she says, “I know.”

“Sorry." Mako taps the pen on the edge of the table. “This is kind of a shitty visit. It’s basically tomorrow morning and I’m just like, drinking all your cocoa and complaining. I didn’t even bring you a fruit basket or anything.”

“Then you can come over for brunch,” says Aria, “You can drink all my coffee instead. Bring the fruit basket next time—Jacqui would like that.”

That startles a laugh out of Mako—a brief, quiet breath of laughter that melts away some of the thin, brittle tension he’d carried in from the cold.

They fill the kitchen with tiny noises: spoons clinking in mugs, pens scribbling on paper, laughter muffled in consideration for people with better sleeping habits than theirs. Jacqui wanders in at some point, rumpled and sleep-muddled, to remind Aria to go to bed. When she sees Mako there too, she doesn’t look at all that surprised; she just punches his arm and says he looks like hell, but in a friendly way. He asks her about her favorite fruit. They make more cocoa, and stay up talking until the dark fades away.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to @vilecrocodile for betaing this and saving my entire mcfucking life

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] what comes after the chorus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13671456) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)




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